With a titanic effort in the 1960s, the construction of the mega-working area Titan began on the outskirts of the city, an area dominated by blocks of 4 and 9 stories, with socio-cultural amenities and generous green spaces, with a minimum distance between blocks of 30 meters.

Richard Nixon’s visit to RomaniaPhoto: AGERPRES

The Titan microdistrict had all the features of realistic-socialist architecture, which had to be useful, functional, massive, where the quarters had to be provided with public spaces. The crown of Titan was and remains the IOR Park, which was inaugurated in 1970 after works that lasted 5 years.

The name comes from the Română Optica factory, which is located next to the park. IOR consists of two parks – Titan and IOR, today Al. I. Kuza. Improvements began in 1965, up to the bridge that separates the two areas of the park. Pits were filled in, the ground was opened and soil was brought in from other areas.

The first cores of the park were created by company employees and, mostly, students. So attractive was the newly built “Titan” (where until recently there were marshes and fields), with landscaped parks, lakes, thousands of cheerful children and new high-rise buildings, that in the summer of 1969 Nicolae Ceausescu took US President Richard. Nixon, in the very center of the neighborhood, to be proud of great achievements.

A year ago, Nicolae Ceausescu condemned the invasion of Czechoslovakia by Russian troops, and the free world considered him a Kremlin dissident. Nixon and Ceausescu rode in an open car; we also know what the President of the United States ate for lunch: foam crab, roasted sparrow with vegetables, tomato salad and currant pie.

A year later, in 1970, the dictatorial president of Zaire, Mobutu Sese Seko, also visited the fledgling district of Titan and presented Ceausescu with a large ribbon of the Order of the Leopard.

Read on B365.ro the history of the Titan district and a memorable fragment of the jazz musician Mihai Yordake. Jordake, the saxophonist who carries the Titan in his heart and made him more famous than he was.